The key to Mme. Adam’s temperament and to all the varied phases of her career is her passionate belief in self-government, in that cause of national independence for which the powers of L’Entente are now engaging in this world-embracing conflict. We may call it a belief, but originally in Mme. Adam’s case it was an instinct born in her and inherited from her father, one of the most ardent of revolutionaries. Mme. Adam is a _revoltée_ to the core. _Toujours hors des rangs_, Gambetta said of her. In numerous incidents of her childhood her rebelliousness revealed itself. The growth of her reasoning powers, however, led her to submit to discipline, to embrace with fervour—she can never do anything by halves—the republican creed, and to become the irreconcilable adversary of the Second Empire. Then the national defeat of 1871, acting upon what she has described as her _combativité rentrée_ (her suppressed combativeness), turned her passion for self-government into an ardent advocacy of the principle of nationality, into a vehement protest against everything which could in even the remotest manner be suspected of undermining that principle. Consequently we shall find Mme. Adam loudly lifting up her voice, vigorously wielding her pen most frequently against Prussian aggressiveness, but also against imperialistic ideas, no matter in what shape or form, no matter in what part of the world she can detect them. We shall find her opposing alike the French tendency to colonial expansion and the Austrian _Drang nach Osten_, Mr. Gladstone’s later policy in Egypt and the Conservative coercion of Ireland, the Magyar domination over the Slav peoples and our war with the Boer Republic in South Africa. We shall find her also ever glorifying the army and navy as the most effective guarantee of national independence. Nationalism is Mme. Adam’s creed, patriotism her religion. French Nationalists, like Léon Daudet, regard her as having been the strong tower of the French idea (_la forteresse de l’idée française_) throughout the forty-four years separating the war of 1914 from the war of 1870. If in later years Mme. Adam has renounced her father’s agnosticism and returned to the bosom of the Church, it is primarily because she considers that only by submitting to the Roman obedience can she best continue the traditions of her country. I am very fortunate, for Mme. Adam has throughout taken a deep interest in this biography. We have discussed it together at length. Despite her multifarious war activities she has found time to write me some forty letters in response to my questions. She has also introduced me to her friend and collaborator in _La Nouvelle Revue_, Mme. Jeanne Krompholtz, who has kindly furnished me with valuable information.